Gnossiennes
by woodbox
Summary: Hayner hates classical music. Seifer/Hayner; mentioned Axel/Roxas and Olette/Pence. Rated for language.


**Title: **Gnossiennes

**Pairings: **Seifer/Hayner

**Disclaimer: **KH is not mine; I simply write the elaborate cliches and butcher the characters.

**Summary: **Hayner hates classical music.

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Today marked the end of the second week Hayner had lived in Plaza Square Apartment number 9-A. The one bedroom, one bath apartment had a cozy, livable open space, a somewhat cramped kitchen (it wasn't like Hayner could cook, anyway) and a great view of the city. He loved his apartment. It had neighbors, though, which wasn't so great.

Below him lived one of his best friends. He had assumed they'd end up hanging out a great deal (but of course he had assumed too much). One night, after attempting to clean up his living room, he went down and knocked on Roxas's door, grinning, a proposition for pizza ready to burst from behind his teeth, only to be greeted at the door by a redheaded man who looked angry enough to punch his face in. Roxas had appeared moments later, telling Axel to calm the fuck down and stop freaking out his friends and explained to Hayner that Axel was his _partner_ and sorry, they had plans maybe some other time, hmm? Hayner had returned to his apartment in a sort of daze, and, having lost his appetite, settled for playing Halo until the wee hours of the morning. He didn't mind that Roxas was gay–it was the other guy who creeped him out.

The neighbor on his left, however, he minded a great deal more. Whoever the hell lived in apartment 10-A hadn't come out (that he'd seen) and they hadn't _once_ turned off the stream of constant, grating, operatic, god-fucking-damn annoying classical music.

Classical music always made him feel this great, deeper melancholy, as if he should lock himself away in a candle-lit room and read Jane Austen books until he cried blood and estrogen, and that said, he definitely wouldn't listen to it if he could help it. The trouble was, he _couldn't_. His mother adored Bach and his older brother, despite his brutish appearance, quite preferred Gottschalk. At last, he'd thought he was out of the house. No more crescendos of broody piano on Saturday mornings, no seductive guitar and harp while he was studying, no more freaking waltzes during dinnertime, no arpeggios, no more fucking violins. He could listen to his angry shouty deathtunes without fearing for his life and he would never, _ever_ hear another concerto.

He was wrong, of course. He knew all the songs his neighbor chose–an unfortunate result of being shouted at one too many times to, please sweetheart, put on some Lizst, it's awfully quiet in here. The Neighbor (Hayner was secretly sure it was a girl) tended to favor the more dramatic pieces; overtures and wordless laments, sometimes the odd sonata.

Hayner started to worry at the end of the first week. He was usually a pretty upstanding, cheerful sort of guy, but if there was one thing that changed that, it was the music. He _had_ tried to just, you know, play his music over the classical crap, but that had chafed his brain in the worst sort of way and he'd ended up moaning into his pillow, despair overtaking him as The Neighbor simply upped the volume on their clearly superior sound system. See, what classical music did to Hayner was simple.

It gave him feelings. To him, this was a very bad thing. Feelings were for Olette to call him about and Roxas to share with his _partner_ and Pence to completely overlook; they were for teenage girls and menstruating women and men who had complexes too complex for Freud. They were not for Hayner. Hayner did not want feelings.

But as soon as The Neighbor put on some Chopin, he felt himself being oddly high-spirited, loving or mysterious. Rachmaninov made him dig up his yearbook and brood mawkishly for hours about the good old days.

Today was especially bad. Fauré woke him from a restless doze–he wasn't getting much sleep lately–and immediately he felt like he was back asleep. He moped around the apartment and thought about maybe going to see if Roxas was up for doing anything. In a fit of curiosity, he pressed his ear to the floor of his bedroom and held his breath, listening. A few seconds and a sort of strangled laugh was all he needed to stand up, throw on a jacket, and take a jog.

Olette was not a fiend for homosexual or any-sexual shenanigans and she did not harbor an obnoxious need for string quartets, thus Hayner felt very safe in asking for her hospitality. She obliged willingly when he arrived at her flat, letting him up and staring at him long enough to subconsciously tell him he was pathetic before launching into a lengthy monologue; declaring that he should've come seen her sooner, called her, too, before he decided to show up looking like some sort of decrepit old hobo in the apartment stairs and what was his problem, anyway?

"The bitch next to me won't stop playing her shit music, Lettie," he said, scowling around his words.

She rolled her eyes. "Look, Hayner, I know you aren't much for real, popular music, but other people have–"

"Really shitty taste in music."

What Hayner loved about Olette was her unpredictability. He once mentioned something about a crisis with beached whales that he'd read about in the Times and she'd hit him in the face and ignored him for a week. (Roxas had to explain to him the whole underlying symbolism and women's resentment towards large sea creatures and bovines.) Another time, he unthinkingly made a dirty joke and she'd laughed while Roxas and Hayner stood stock still, thinking it was certain death. Her responses were never, ever anticipated. Now, he was sure she wasn't in a cursing mood. She didn't, thankfully, seem to notice.

"Hayner! Listen to me!" she cried, slamming a skillet onto her stove. She had wandered into the kitchen and managed to get Hayner to sit down and agree eat something. "Other people have really annoying habits that you just have to get over or _deal _with them."

He narrowed his eyes at her now-turned back. "What do _you_ know?"

She snorted. "_Oh, _you don't want to know. You have _no idea_." She said this as it it weren't extremely vague and started to rummage around in her fridge.

"Roxas lives in the apartment under mine," he said after a minute, sensing the need for a new thread of conversation.

"I know," Olette replied, a hint of irritation barely audible. "_He_ calls."

Hayner was sure that wasn't all they'd talked about, and he didn't miss the accusation. "Did you know he's–"

"Gay, yes, Hayner, I know." Hayner got an ugly look on his face at that, something dark and contemplative, like he had Madame Butterfly banging on his cranial cavity with unsubdued rage.

She set down a plate of eggs and toast and ordered him to eat, which he did slowly and without making eye contact.

"Why wouldn't he tell me?" he asked after a few minutes, unable to keep his thoughts in. "I mean, we're buddies."

"Because you react badly," she told him. And she was right. Hayner wasn't a thinking sort of person; he just did things and dealt with the repercussions later. "Look at me."

He looked up. Olette was pointing at him with half a bagel, her eyes serious. "Roxas trusts you, so don't get all bent out of shape about something that has nothing to do with you. And really, Axel is a nice guy. I mean–" she faltered there, sounding a little at a loss for words. "He's kind of a jackass, but not the same kind as like, Seifer or someone."

"And that's a good thing?" he dared to ask. When had the world turned inside out and decided that your best friend living with an asshole was just great, peachy, thanks?

"He loves Roxas," she concluded, finishing the bagel. "So, about your problem. What do you want me to do about it?"

Hayner scratched his arm absently. He hadn't really thought about why he was coming to Olette for this. Ah, yeah, Roxas was preoccupied and couldn't plan any nasty pranks, and Pence was too far into his job to even have the capacity to plan any juvenile trickery. "Sort of just wanted to get away from the classical shit," he said, shrugging. And then, when he saw Olette look to the lower right and open her mouth, "And I missed you. Thanks for the eggs."

She smiled. "You could always go over and pretend to ask to borrow some like, cooking ingredients, and then punch her," she offered.

"I think I'll just go introduce myself," he decided. Maybe his neighbor was mentally challenged and hadn't yet deduced that apartment 9 was in fact, no longer vacant.

–o–o–

Seifer Almasy was by far the least productive journalist in his city. He usually looked to his friends to drag him out and into the hustling, bustling world (even if it meant a trip to the city). But now, since summer was here and they were restless, he was left all alone. In a fit of "maturity," Vivi had claimed that she no longer needed to depend on people and thus, they were no longer friends; Rai and Fuu were more strikingly absent, having both accepted overseas study courses (Fuu in her native Korea, Rai in Spain). This left Seifer annoyed and uninspired with nothing witty to write for the Daily Salt. He had tried, at first, to wander around and observe, but he found that without friends to socialize with, a guy at the corner table staring at you meanly while he writes on a legal pad is not generally an accepted standard.

Pissed and still uninspired, he had returned to his apartment. There was one, last thing he could do, and that was Classical music. Within minutes of hearing the first strains of Strauss, he sat down with a big smile at his laptop and churned out a great piece on the irony of hatred.

Classical music was not something he liked. He liked something that he was reminded of by classical music, though there was no chance in hell he'd ever tell you what. A guy like Seifer was meant to never like anything. Humor (always at the expense of someone else) was his life, but he was rarely ever taken, himself, by the irony he wrote.

That is, until _that_ day.

–o–o–

Hayner fully intended to do exactly what he'd told Olette, so when he got home after lunch and three, quite frankly, miserable hours of shopping, he combed his hair up and checked on his face, making sure Olette hadn't given him any bruises, locked his door, and went to stand in front of number 10-A.

He did not expect what happened next.

The door opened slowly, and two faces stared at each other before one, Hayner, let out a great big "No fucking way" and Seifer just stared with that look he got when he saw Hayner. Sort of a grin, sort of a smirk, and secretly suppressing excited nausea.

"Turn off your fucking music, bastard!" Hayner screamed; he had gotten over the initial shock of being Seifer's neighbor–of all people!–surprisingly quickly. "I feel like a fucking woman," he muttered vaguely.

Seifer laughed, a chuckle that started in his belly and spilled out of his throat, bubbly and giggly like champagne, totally unSeifer. "I thought you _liked_ Classical music, dipshit."

And in fact, he did. That was the reason Seifer listened to it. In all the years that he'd lived on the same street as Hayner, he'd heard those constant, haunting orchestras and the symphonies and thought of Hayner and Hayner's mother and Hayner's scary older brother who beat on him, so really he was just returning the favor to Hayner. He had felt sort of guilty, but it was Roxas he didn't like (honestly).

"Are you fucking _joking_?" Hayner yelled, cocking his head sharply in anger.

Years later, when he was in high school, a senior to Hayner's sophomore ass, and Roxas had gone crazy and missing, he realized that without Roxas around, his feelings towards Hayner were more kind–er, that is to say, he thought less _violent_ and more _vibrant_ thoughts about the dirty blond boy.

Like, how he looked pretty much always angry, even if he was looking at like, a bucket of kittens. Seifer thought he was funny, cute in a way girls just _weren't_. His family had moved across town that year, and it was around then that he'd realized that classical music made him think of Hayner, and Hayner was something he really, truly liked.

Other things he liked included and were limited to: journalism, reading, beating Roxas up, Fuu, Rai, Vivi (sometimes), and nectarines.

"I _hate_ classical music," Hayner said presently, bitterly glaring at Seifer, straight in the eyes. He sort of hoped to kill the bastard with ill-wishing.

He didn't realize that it wasn't the glare that had suddenly crumbled Seifer's raison-d'etrê.

"You don't," Seifer stated, clarifying.

"Hell no!" Hayner stomped past him into Seifer's apartment, the sound system filling his entire line of vision. He pulled the plug from the wall angrily, the Gnossiennes nº 6 suddenly gone.

His emotions were gone, too, and he was left holding the plug and looking like a jackass in his neighbor and longstanding nemesis's apartment.

They were both still and silent for a while before Seifer asked, "Do you live next door?"

Hayner gave him a sort of blank awkward look that clearly meant both "yes," and "shit."

Seifer sighed.

Conceptual semantics was such a funny thing. One minute, something means something, the next, another. Seifer was sure that Brahams would no longer inspire him with bizarrely comforting thoughts of Hayner when the guy was just next door and hating him with a burning passion.

"Look, you kinda," Seifer started, then faltered, having looked up to see the what-the-fuck look that Hayner was sending him. "You messed up my flow, barging in like that," he lied, "So I think it's only fair that you stay here until I finish."

"As punishment," Hayner said despairingly.

"No, dipshit, as a favor." Seifer snorted. "You really are _that_ dense, aren't you?"

"How could that be a favor?"

Seifer shook his head and went back to his laptop. He cast a long, sideways glance at the younger man before cracking his knuckles and getting back to work. Hayner moved himself to the couch, and in a sullen fit, muttered criticism about the living room furnishings.

An hour or so later, Hayner had spread himself all across the couch and was comfortably irritable. He kept trying to think of _why_ Seifer would consider asking him to stay a favor. Maybe, he'd first thought, Seifer would beat him up later; but they were getting too old for that and Hayner just didn't see the fight in him now. He had no solid ideas after that.

A sheet of paper floated down onto his face. He hadn't noticed the printer going, but there was Seifer looking about as irritable as Hayner but pleased, too, if in a very minor way.

Hayner read:

_Dear Fucking Idiot,_

_ I used to beat you up because your brother beat me up. That's all it was and I'm sorry I've been such a dick to you and your friends. Except for Roxas, maybe, because he really pissed me off a few times._

_I moved out when my family moved away and I got really restless. I thought maybe, at first, it was just being on my own that made me that way. But then I figured out that if I thought of you, I got a lot calmer and stuff. I'm a journalist and I need inspiration (in small doses), and what I have is you._

_So I listened to the music that made me think of you, and that was good, except now you've ruined it._

_And you owe me this favor._

_ Seifer "Asshole" Almasy_

Hayner looked up, completely confused by this point, to ask, "What favor?" and Seifer bent down, tugged the paper from his hands, and kissed him on the cheek.

"Lets go grab some dinner," he said.

"Wait a fucking minute–are you _gay_?" Hayner climbed over the back of the sofa, staring incredulously at Seifer.

"Just shut up and come on, would you?"

Then there was a miracle. Hayner stopped and thought.

Maybe, just maybe, there was an opportunity in this.

He took it, and they left.

–o–o–

In the months and years that followed, apartment 9-A became vacant again, and was occupied again by a petite artist who loved the classical music.

Olette married Pence, which was only surprising in that _he_ actually proposed to her. She went to school to become a teacher and continued to nag Hayner for not calling. Roxas and Axel moved away to a bigger city with more lights and more fire, but not before Hayner had spent enough time with the redhead to know, precisely why, too, that he did not like him.

Hayner moved next door, where he generally sat around and did nothing–homework, on occasion, but mostly he watched television and complained and schemed. Seifer continued to write for the Daily Salt, but his humor got more popular, his wit drier. They had an interesting dynamic, the two of them. At first, Hayner was completely oblivious, just like always, and it happened one day under the clock tower that Hayner finally understood and punched Seifer in the face, shouting and asking why no one had bothered to explain it to him before.

They listened to classical music, because feelings weren't so bad when you had someone who understood them. Seifer sneered less, Hayner frowned less, and the city continued to go on.

In the background, they could always make out Satie's Gnossiennes nº6, and life was, in general, pretty good.

_end._

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_A/N: I have nothing to say for myself._


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